MLS labor agreement continues league’s evolution

Major League Soccer’s new
collective-bargaining agreement — the second in the league’s 15-year history —
is less revolutionary than evolutionary.

Unlike other professional
sports leagues, MLS officials didn’t ask for concessions from players. Instead,
they wanted a five-year deal that preserved the league’s single-entity status
and offered no free agency to players.

The new deal the league and
MLS Players Union announced last week gave the league all three things it
wanted, but it also included key changes that will give players new rights,
change the way MLS and its teams operate, and influence the future of MLSPU.
Here’s a look at several changes and how they will affect the league and union.

Quality of life

Because MLS is a
single-entity league, it will still book flights and hotel accommodations for
all of its teams, but under the new CBA there is more language about what
hotels are acceptable and how high per diems will be.

As recently as last year,
MLS players traveling to Massachusetts to play the New England Revolution
stayed in the Sheraton Braintree, a hotel that Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl
described in “The Beckham Experiment” as being “bathed in car-exhaust fumes.” Players visiting New England now stay at the
recently built Renaissance Boston Hotel at Patriot Place. Now, comparable hotels
will be standard under the new CBA.

Players also will see their
per diems rise from $50 a day to $65 plus $10 a day for incidental expenses.

The league also will pay
moving expenses for players who are traded and put those players up in a hotel
for 21 days. Previously, the league only paid $5,000 toward moving expenses and
were obligated to pay for a player’s hotel for 14 days.

Coaching change

Life just got more difficult for MLS coaches and player
personnel executives.

Under the previous CBA, the standard league contract with
players typically were one-year agreements with multiple one-year options. That
meant a team could sign a player for four years but drop him without affecting
its salary cap after any season by declining to pick up his option.

The new deal changes that by increasing the number of MLS
players with guaranteed contracts from approximately 25 percent to 57 percent,
according to league and player estimates.

Teams can still sign players to deals with options, but under
the new agreement, players whose options aren’t picked up by a team will enter
a waiver draft where other teams can pick them up at their negotiated option
price. That will put more pressure on teams to honor the options.

“It’s now important for teams to focus on the negative-options
salaries and overall term of the contract, given the fact that there is less
flexibility with options,” said Houston Dynamo COO Chris Canetti. “We need to
be smart and more effective with signings because there’s less room for error.”

Green exhibitions

Under the previous CBA,
MLS teams could schedule as many exhibition games as they wanted, ask players
to play and not pay them a dime. If a player got hurt, the team might lose his
contribution on the field but the player lost the opportunity to meet
performance metrics in his contract.

In other words, the players
played extra games with no upside — only consequence. But that’s going to change.

Under the new CBA, teams have
to pay players for exhibition games. The first game is free; the second is $500
per player; the third is $750 per player; and the fourth is $1,000 per player.
Games against elite international teams like FC Barcelona or Club
America
cost
even more.

Fight
another day

The biggest issue in the MLS
labor negotiations was the players’ fight for free agency. Ultimately, players
worked for limited freedom of movement and opted to fight for full free agency
another day.

Taylor Twellman, the player
representative for the New England Revolution, said that players knew in order
to achieve free agency, they would have to strike. Though the players
overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike, he said they didn’t really want to
strike because of the league’s economic condition and the general state of the
economy.

“I wouldn’t say one side
caved in,” Twellman said. “It was really an open discussion about what is best
for soccer and how can we avoid a strike.”

Five years from now, Twellman
said, MLS players may seek free agency again “if the league is cranking and the
stadiums are filled.”

Future of the union

The future of the union’s
leadership is not entirely clear given the fact that players failed to achieve
the right they coveted most: free agency. However, a few player-side sources
who did speak out last week voiced support for MLSPU Executive Director Bob
Foose, general counsel Jon Newman, and Eddie Pope, director of player
relations, praising the work the trio did during the last two years to unify
players.

Players felt prepared for
every scenario that might arise during negotiations, Columbus Crew player
representative William Hesmer said. For example, he said that the union had
sent players an example of a letter it believed the league would send prior to
a strike about cutting health insurance. As expected, the league sent a nearly
identical copy of the union’s “example” letter two weeks ago.

“They had the foresight to
see exactly how the negotiations would play out and it did play out that way,”
Hesmer said. “Bob Foose, Jon Newman, Eddie Pope — they all did a tremendous
job.”